Effectiveness of e-cigarettes in reducing smoking habit: A critical appraisal of evidence

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Title page
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HLSC122 Semester 2, 2018
Assessment 3: Critical appraisal of evidence
Word count: 1200
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Introduction
Smoking is considered as one of the biggest reasons behind the increased morbidity
and mortality rate among the people from all over the world. Various new policies and
equipments have been brought into the market to reduce the affect of smoking and one of
them is e-cigarettes (Qiu et al., 2017). It is assumed that the use of such cigarettes can reduce
the habit of smoking to a great extent (Ott, Takses, Obermeier, Schnoy & Müller, 2014). In
the given case study, Joanne wants to know the effectiveness of e-cigarettes, compared to
other nicotine replacement therapies in reducing her smoking habit. This paper will analyse a
relevant article in detail along with its strength and limitations. At the same time it will also
find the answer of the main research question which is related to the effectiveness of e-
cigarettes.
Body
Part A
Authorship
Brown, Beard, Kotz, Michie & West, (2014), in their article discussed the
effectiveness of e-cigarettes, compared to other nicotine replacement therapies. The authors
were associated with the Cancer Research UK Health Behavior Research Centre, University
College London, Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University
College London, Department of Family Medicine, CAPHRI School for Public Health and
Primary Care, Maastricht University Medical Centre, Maastricht, the Netherlands, Health
Behaviour Research Centre, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University
College London and the e-mail id of the author has also been provided. Authors declared that
the study hypotheses arose before any inspection of the data and that all STROBE
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recommendations were followed properly, during the study and it will be using an established
methodology, aiming to assess the effectiveness of e-cigarettes in aiding smoking cessation
when compared to other nicotine replacement therapies. According to the area of expertise of
authors, they are associated with epidemiology and public health, cancer and health
behaviour research and their qualification was high in this aspect which is main strength in
finding the effectiveness of alternative methods to reduce the smoking habits and its adverse
effects on human health. Their study added noise and potential bias on smokers needing to
recall the time of relapse. The recall bias will work against finding the exact benefits of using
the e-cigarettes. All the authors have completed the Unified competing interest form and they
also clearly declared that they do not have any financial relationship or affiliation with any
particular company selling e-cigarettes and even the funders, associated with the study have
no role in the study design. The final decision about the study has been taken by the
investigators and was unrestricted.
Research Questions
The study addressed the question that how effective e-cigarettes are when compared
to other Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) and unaided quitting in the general population
of smokers who are trying to quit their smoking habits. The research question was extremely
essential in finding how it can improve the health outcome and reduce the smoking habits
which in turn decrease the mortality rate caused by the disease that occurs due to smoking.
The study was published online on 8th of August, 2014 (Brown, Beard, Kotz, Michie & West,
2014).
Research design
In the paper, a cross-sectional household surveys have been designed as research
method. The study collected data from the month of July 2009 to February 2014. In order to
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